


One Hundred Days in the Himalayas

by kidchinogroupie



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, League of Assassins - Freeform, Lots of meditating and reflecting and shit, M/M, Nanda Parbat, Recovery, Size Kink, Slow Burn, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2019-06-11 09:32:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 17,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15312579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kidchinogroupie/pseuds/kidchinogroupie
Summary: “I need to find some—some peace.”Post The Flash S02/Arrow S04. In the aftermath Henry Allen's death, Barry turns to Oliver for comfort and guidance. The two spend some time together in a distant place, and, with the help of Eastern philosophy, discover what they mean to each other.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Posted for Olivarry Week 2018 Day 4: Free Day
> 
> This fic is a protest against the Flashpoint dumpster fire that was The Flash Season 3. I have posted the first half for Olivarry Week, and will try to finish the rest in the coming weeks. Also, I'm currently sans beta, so you're interested in doing that, please shoot me an email! Lastly, for the elite group of readers who are fans of both The Flash/Arrow and Avatar: The Last Airbender, you will recognize the plot concept and certain lines of dialogue from Avatar S02 E19: The Guru.

_“We just won. We just beat Zoom. Why does it feel like I just lost?”_

…

_“I feel more broken than I’ve ever felt in my life.”_

…

_“I need to find some—some peace.”_

…

Barry runs through the streets of Central City. Hard. Gliding, dodging, weaving, barely feeling. Every breath feels ragged, every bone feels leaden. He runs faster still as dark thoughts fill his head.

_You’re an orphan._

_You didn’t even spend a year with him out of prison._

_You didn’t get to make up for lost time._

_He’ll never meet your spouse._

_He’ll never get to play with your kids._

_He was already gone when you held him in your arms._

Barry’s feet speed up, impossibly faster, as he wipes the tears out of his eyes. The sadness is heavy. It’s so much to bear, pulling him down beneath the earth. He just wants to run past it, to have it fall off him like a shroud. To be free.

He senses the wormhole before he sees it. Swirling, stormy clouds of light, with the past just beyond the event horizon. What he wouldn’t give for it all to have never happened.

It pulls at him, his limbs feeling almost separate from the rest of his body. He’s seconds away from giving in, from running straight through, when a stray, seemingly rhetorical question rings out in his mind.

_Could anyone else understand what this feels like?_

It dawns on him: he can think of one person.

He bears right, narrowly avoiding the wormhole’s grasp, but maintaining speed. Heading due west.

He’s doesn’t rest, doesn’t pause, doesn’t stop to smell the fucking roses until he’s through the campaign office doors, down the secret elevator, running up the steps, and crashing into Oliver Queen’s warm, solid chest.

Oliver is holding him before he even gets a word out. “…Barry?”

Barry can only respond in suffocating, wracking sobs, his words swallowed by the emptiness within him, his tears dampening the soft fabric of Oliver’s henley.

Oliver makes shushing sounds, rubs circles in Barry’s back as he lowers them to the floor, his back slipping down a pillar. He wraps his arms around the younger man fully and tightly.

“Oh, Barry…”


	2. Day 15

“Breathe _deep_ , Barry.”

His eyes screwed shut, Barry hears Oliver’s words ringing out, but try as he may, he cannot not calm his breath. It feels like the cavern is closing in on him. The pressure on his sternum is immense. Sweat is beading on his forehead and bare chest. Imperceptible glimpses of lightning flash across his mind’s eye.

“I can’t, I’m sorry,” he says, his voice pained.

“It’s okay,” says Oliver, his tone tranquil and soothing. “What do you see?”

Barry focuses on the images in his mind. He can see wisps and sparks zigzagging, red at first, but they turn paler. 

“I can see blue lightning. It’s whipping all around me.” 

A shape is beginning to form, still wreathed in darkness. 

“I can see a person. He’s coming closer.” 

His breath quickens even more. His body is now covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and his muscles tense in fear. He can hear someone speaking, and it’s not Oliver.

“ _Flash_.”

He’ll never forget that raspy, guttural, inhuman voice.

The name just barely escapes his lips. “Zoom.”

Suddenly Zoom is there, standing in front of him as clear as day, his hand vibrating and spearing towards him. Barry can’t move, can’t turn away. He opens his mouth to scream but no sound comes out as Zoom’s hand pierces his heart.

Then, black.

\---

When Barry regains consciousness, he feels pressure all around him, but the good kind. He realizes that Oliver is holding him, rocking back and forth as he rubs the small of Barry’s back. Barry hadn’t really realized that Ollie had a gentle side until he’d ran to Star City after his dad died. That already feels like half a lifetime ago.

They’d been in Nanda Parbat for two weeks now. It was Oliver’s idea. “You need to get away from Central City. A place where you can rest, recover, and heal,” he’d said. “When there aren’t League of Assassin members trying to kill you, Nanda Parbat is actually pretty peaceful.”

Turns out he was right. Far from any civilization and high up in the mountains, Barry felt it was as close to leaving this world as could be imagined. The stronghold, once the site of tortures and merciless killings, was hauntingly beautiful in its silence and absence of inhabitants.

And so they undertook the restoration process together. Sleeping in separate, sparsely furnished rooms, rising early, brewing tea, drinking said bitter tea, meditating, subsisting on wild greens, root vegetables, and the occasional vole, watching the stars at night, going to bed tired but not weary. It was nice.

Barry had felt the storms in his mind begin to dissipate, the ache in his heart becoming duller. As the days passed, he had begun to wonder why Oliver continued to stay with him. “Don’t you have a city to run, Mayor Queen?” Barry had asked.

Oliver had shrugged. “I’ve got people covering for me,” he’d said, as if it was a shift at Jitters instead of the chief executive position of an entire fucking metropolis.

Barry hadn’t pressed him, though. Truth be told, he was still barely keeping it together. But then he’d see Oliver looking at him, his eyes piercing, but soft around the edges, conveying immediate understanding, and making Barry feel like there was something worth holding onto. If Oliver left him here to his own devices, Barry thought he might lose his grip on that anchor, and he wasn’t sure if he could come back from being adrift.

So they kept on carrying on. Wake, om, tea, om, eat, om, sleep, om, repeat, om. It seemed like the healing process was working its magic.

But of course, Barry is easily distractible.

Oliver gently grabs Barry by the shoulders and makes to look him in the eye. “Barr, are you okay? What did you see?”

Barry swallows. Just thinking about it made his blood run cold. “It was, uh—it was Zoom. He was gonna kill me. I couldn’t move.” He takes a shallow breath. “I couldn’t move,” he repeats.

The look Ollie gives him, like he feels the selfsame pain, is enough for Barry, though. “Come on,” Oliver says, standing up and hooking his arm under Barry’s. “You need to rest.”

Barry rises, lets Oliver lead him along. Even after he’s regained his balance, he still leans against Oliver. Broken spirits need crutches, too.


	3. Day 16

Sunlight pours into the meager quarters—the light, filtered by 10,000 feet less of atmosphere, feels somehow purer, not harsh, but warm and invigorating, like an afternoon bath. Barry pushes himself up from his sleeping pallet. His recollection of how he got here is foggy, but the exhaustion is still bone-deep.

Gingerly, Barry rises, his bare feet shuffling across the cool stone floor. Throwing on a shirt and a light jacket, he makes his way through the castle, in search of the vile tea he’s now come to depend on. He’s almost shocked when he doesn’t find a kettle warming over the fireplace. Granted, there are no clocks, so his sense of time is vague, but for the past two weeks, no matter how early he’s woken, Oliver has always been up first.

He turns down a heretofore unexplored hallway, to the room where Oliver has taken up residence. Sure enough, Barry can see through the crack in the door that he is indeed still asleep. The older man must have stayed up to make sure Barry was okay. His breathing now is soft and regular, his eyes gently closed, his body not relaxed, exactly, but vulnerable in a way Barry doesn’t often see. He lingers for a moment—in fascination of the multitude of scars and tattoos on Oliver’s well-muscled chest—but then chastises himself for staring, and turns away.

His routine interrupted, Barry goes where his legs will him, which is out of the stronghold and for a walk through the grounds. The speedster does a lot walking these days, much more than he’s used to. He tells himself it’s the diet—he’s not eating nearly enough carbs and protein to sustain high speed running. But he knows in his heart that he couldn’t even if he tried. It’s like something’s not there that used to be. Or worse, something is there and he just can’t reach past it.

He winds down somewhat familiar paths, through the training grounds, past the lookout post, parallel to the cliff’s edge sloping deep into a ravine. Without realizing it, he’s found himself at a secluded spot, obscured by rock walls, staring into seven serene pools, each on its own terrace flowing into the one below.

“The previous inhabitants treated these as sacred,” Oliver had said, the first time they encountered the pools together. “They thought they were a representation of the human body.”

Barry had looked at him quizzically. “The body is like a bunch mucky ponds,” he had said deadpan.

Oliver had seemed like he might give Barry a condescending look, but instead he’d responded in his regular, patient tone. “The Assassins subscribed to the belief that energy in the body flows through a single path, punctuated by seven chakras—basically swirling pools of cosmic energy.”

He had crouched down near the water’s edge, and Barry had made to join him. He’d picked up a clump of pond scum and held it up to the moonlight. “If there was nothing blocking the paths between the pools, the water would flow clean and clear. But this gunk stands for life’s messiness—the baggage we carry that affects the way we live. That prevents us from doing the things we’re capable of doing.”

Barry had swallowed, trying not to give too much away. “So do you have to be an Assassin to try clear away the junk?”

“No, you don’t. Any person can work to open their chakras. The idea is that those who do reach a higher level of themselves.”

Barry only had to look at him to know that there was something Oliver wasn’t telling him.

Oliver had sighed. “Barry, you need to know that the process of opening your chakras is a really intense experience. It can dredge up feelings and memories that are buried for a reason, things you don’t want to relive. There’s no doing it halfway.”

He had tried to imagine what it could be like that made Oliver even more somber than usual. “Have you done it?” Barry had asked almost without thinking, blushing slightly at the double entendre.

Oliver had nodded. “Though I’m not sure I could now,” he had said cryptically. “I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.”

Barry had looked him straight in the eyes. “Oliver, I’m barely sleeping, I’m anxious all the time, and I can’t even think about what happened without losing all sense of control,” he’d said, his throat tight. “I’m way past the recommended solutions.”

Oliver’s expression had been pained, like there was more still he’d wished he could say.

“Okay, Barry,” he’d answered eventually, his tone absent of any approval or disapproval. “We’ll start tomorrow.”

Barry steps toward the water’s edge. If Oliver had mentioned the first chakra is all about facing your fears anytime before he was supposed to try and actually open the damn thing, Barry would have said thanks, but no thanks. Maybe it was a good thing, then, that he didn’t say anything.

Skimming his hand along the surface of the water, Barry thinks about if he has it in him to try again. To lay bare his fears and confront the thing that he’d been avoiding even thinking about for the last 16 days: that he wasn’t fast enough to save his dad.

Barry absentmindedly grabs at the water, releasing some of the anxiety and frustration and contempt for the fucking Assassins and their scarily accurate philosophies. By mistake, he dislodges some of the pond scum, and the water flows down from the first pool with such force that Barry is taken aback. Down, down the creek rushes, the intensity of the flow clearing more and more gunk. Within minutes, the water is completely clean, softly reflecting the morning sun now rising over the mountain peaks. It’s breathtaking—something despoiled suddenly made beautiful.

Much to his chagrin, Barry is nothing if not a believer in signs. No, vulnerability is not as simple as clearing pond scum out of the way. No, opening one chakra would not make the others fall in line like dominoes. But still, maybe it’s worth it.

Walking back to the castle, Barry can see Oliver standing at the precipice looking out, his brow scrunched in worry. Even when he catches sight of Barry, his countenance remains furrowed.

“Where were you?” Irritation and condescension just barely stay out of his tone. Or maybe he really was worried.

“Well if you don’t make tea for me in the morning, I’m pretty much a man without a purpose,” Barry said, smirking, leaning forward a bit, trying to cut the tension.

“Barry…”

“It’s fine, Oliver. I just went for a walk. I’ve kinda got a lot on my mind lately.”

The creases in Oliver’s forehead begin to smoothen out. “You’re not wearing any shoes,” he says, apropos of nothing.

Barry looks down. “Well, look at that,” he remarks, wiggling his toes. “Neither are you.”

Oliver wiggles his toes in response, a rare moment of levity from him. His feet are completely unblemished, free of the scars and tattoos that cover most of his body. They could be the feet of a billionaire’s son, a CEO, an actuary—someone who didn’t carry all the burdens that Ollie did.

“Sometimes you forget to do things, like put on shoes, when you’re trying to make sure somebody doesn’t run off a cliff,” Oliver says almost straight-faced, the ghost of a grin haunting his countenance.

“Do you think of yourself as my guardian? That’s rich,” Barry says, before internally wincing. Because Oliver is a father. To William. Right.

“You know, I was thinking,” Barry continues, partially to segue before Oliver can take offense, but also to say what he needs to say before he loses his nerve, “I want to try again. With the earth chakra.”

“Barry, I never should have suggested it in the first place. The whole thing with Zoom was only weeks ago. You can’t be expected to overcome fears of something still fresh in your memory.” His voice is guilt-ridden. Classic Oliver—blaming himself before anyone else.

“Maybe you’re right. But staying passive, and letting these fears control my life isn’t doing anyone any favors, least of all me,” Barry says with a clarity that he’s long been searching for.

Oliver still looks slightly distraught. “It’ll be my decision, and mine alone, Ollie,” Barry adds as a futile attempt to release Oliver from any fault.

Shaking his head, Oliver replies, “Let’s at least have tea first. And some onion and banana juice.”

“Some _what_?”

“Trust me, it helps.”


	4. Day 18

Eyes closed, eyes open; inside, outside; within, without—everything is darkness.

They’re in a cave deep under Nanda Parbat, far beneath any opening to the sky or even a glimmer of light. For the past few moments, Oliver and Barry have been sitting in quiet, contemplating and adjusting themselves to true darkness.

Then, Oliver lights a small flame. He, like Barry, is not wearing a shirt, and a thin layer of sweat glistens on his chest in the firelight. Barry finds, for some reason, he’s lost focus on his breathing regimen.

“In and out, Barry. In and out.”

Closing his eyes, Barry takes a deep breath, centering himself and trying very hard to avoid thinking about the double meaning in Oliver’s words. Clearing his mind, Barry focuses first on his neck, feeling the comfort and discomfort there, the tightness of muscle and the sensitivity of nerves. His thoughts then travel, slowly, down his spine, feeling the changes in his body as he goes. He breathes more and more deeply until his thoughts reach his sacrum.

“The first step to opening your body and mind,” Oliver says, his voice just loud enough to cross the space between them, “is the earth chakra, located at the base of the spine. It deals with survival, and is blocked by fear.”

Inhale, exhale. Darkness.

“What are you most afraid of, Barry?” Oliver asks, his tone as gentle as it can be. “Let your fears become clear to you.”

At first, Barry just sees glimpses and shadows. Tony Woodward, first in elementary school, then as Girder, his fist barreling towards Barry’s ribcage. Then Captain Cold and Heat Wave, Grodd, Killer Frost, and countless other villains that challenged him, but that he ultimately defeated. 

But then he sees Reverse Flash, taunting him and circling him around the football stadium. Farooq Gibran, Blackout, hurling lightning at him and sapping his powers in a matter of seconds. Zoom chasing him around the Magnetar, his hand reaching out to grab Barry and throw him off the track.

By now, Barry is covered in a cold sweat, but he’s at least able to hold these images in his mind without succumbing. He sees lightning—red, blue, white—hurtling towards him, and he can’t outrun it.

“I’m afraid,” he says panting, trying to calm his racing heartbeat, “I’m afraid that my speed will never be enough for what’s out there.”

It pains Barry just to say the words. Here he is—a speedster—given one of the most unique gifts in the universe, and what worries him the most is not whether he’ll live up to the name, but whether his powers will suffice.

“It’s okay to be afraid, Barry. The villains we face do more than threaten our safety; they endanger our very being.” The firm gentleness of Oliver’s words seems to get through to Barry in his troubled state.

“The truth is, your powers aren’t enough. It’s not by virtue of how fast you can run that Central City is kept safe. It’s all that you are as the Flash, your drive to serve, your instinct to protect those in need, and your team that supports you—everything together is what will keep you running.”

Barry can see them all: Cisco, tinkering with his suit, dutifully monitoring the scene; Caitlin, checking his vitals and making sure he’s taking care of himself; Joe, worrying in the way that only parents do; even Oliver, the first person to make him check his ego, but also the one who keeps him from doubting himself.

“Surrender your fears of survival, Barry. Let them flow out of you.”

Barry breathes in, and as he opens his eyes, the visions from his past fade away. As he exhales, the changes are instantaneous. His heartrate slows, his breathing evens, and the tightness in his chest unravels. For a brief moment, he can perceive his very physiology, and feels something akin to a flower blooming inside him. Then it all clears, and it’s just him and Oliver in a poorly lit, slightly stuffy cave.

Oliver grins, like _really_ grins, and reaches out to grab Barry’s shoulder, like an anchor. “You did it, Barr. You opened your root chakra. I’m so happy for you.”

Barry can’t help but smile. “I barely did anything. You were the one that talked me through it.”

Oliver emphatically shakes his head, and they’re close enough that Barry can count the short, cropped hairs. “You named your fear. You were able to isolate it, identify it, and say the words out loud. Some people have to work through years of emotional baggage before they can be that vulnerable.”

The younger man tries not to blush, but he can’t help but internally beam under Oliver’s praises. “I can’t help but be vulnerable around you, Ollie. You’ve already shot me full of arrows. What more could you do to me?” Barry deadpans, only half joking.

The older man chuckles, squeezes Barry’s collarbone, and makes to stand up. “Come on, Speedy. Let’s get you out of the dark.”

“That’s what you call your little sister!”

“Seems like an apt comparison to me.”

Barry feigns offense, but still follows Oliver, not for the first or last time, into the light.


	5. Day 23

“You are not very good at this, Barry.”

Oliver has just pocketed another of his carrom pieces, which means just two more and the game will be his. Again. Meanwhile, Barry has been focusing harder on this than he had on his SATs, and he’s managed to nab a grand total of three pieces out of _nine_.

“Thanks, Ollie. That observation had not escaped me,” Barry replies, tone drily sarcastic.

Since it’s a Friday night—though to be honest, how did it being Friday make the night different than any other in Nanda Parbat?—Oliver had decided to pull out one of the League’s old carrom boards to do something more fun than drinking strong herbal tea and thinking about inner peace.

Really, though, he’s just trying to placate Barry. It had been _five_ whole days since he’d opened his earth chakra, but Oliver still isn’t letting him move on to the next one. He keeps giving the same lines about allowing the body to equilibrate, but Barry is certain that Oliver thinks he would break if they move through the chakras too quickly.

Which, even summoning up his deepest wells of righteous indignation, Barry can’t be mad at Ollie about. It’s actually really thoughtful, and probably accurate. It’s even more considerate that he’s both sparing Barry’s feelings, and trying to make up for it, too. But still, that doesn’t mean that Barry can’t feel miffed about miserably losing a game whose core athletic component is _flicking_.

He misses yet again. The striker passes back to Oliver—a second one was missing from the set, likely lodged in some poor bastard’s eyeball, knowing the Assassins.

Effortlessly, Oliver manages to hit two pieces into the pocket in one fell swoop. Barry tries not to gape, but his overly expressive face won’t allow him to deny Oliver the pleasure of seeing how stupefied he is.

“That’s four games to nothing. Maybe we should pack up, unless you think you could win best five out of nine…” Oliver says, his tone uncharacteristically light and teasing.

“Just reset the board,” says Barry. Truth be told, he’s always kind of enjoyed the friendly rivalry they’ve had the past few years.

Oliver clears the pieces and dumps chalk in little peaks to reapply to the board.

Barry’s not sure what compels him—the stir-craziness, Oliver’s genial mood, or the powerful, unnamed need to _know_ —but he asks, “So what happened between you and Felicity?”

For a microsecond, Oliver freezes, and something like a grimace passes through his downturned face. Then he exhales.

“You were right, when you said she needed to know about William. It wasn’t the violence or the danger or the jealous exes that drove us apart—it was the lies. My lies.”

Looking up, Oliver’s expression is completely sunken. Whatever happened between him and Felicity, it’s still fresh.

“Ollie…”

“The stakes get higher, the rules keep changing, and I just wanted to keep William safe. Even that turned out to be too much to ask for. I still wonder if if it would be easier to go it alone.”

Now Barry feels like it’s his turn to play mentor. He grabs the pieces out of Oliver’s hands, places them on the board, and looks him in the eye. “Oliver Jonas Queen, how can you say that after talking me through the earth chakra? You know this all would have ended a long time ago if you had done it alone.”

He still looks downtrodden. “I know, Barry. I know I need Felicity and the rest of the team—some days, I need them more than anything else.”

He sighs. “The thing is, though, I thought Felicity understood me more deeply than she did. There are some choices I make that go beyond her and the team. I have an allegiance to them, and to my city. But my duty to my family?”

Barry realizes that Oliver is gripping his wrist, but their eyes are still locked on one another. It’s like Barry is seeing him for the first time—his loyalty, his conviction, his bravery.

“Thea and William are the only blood relatives I have left. I would die for them before anyone or anything else. And Damien Dahrk knew that. He knew just how to get to me.” Oliver’s rage seems barely restrained beneath his hushed tone.

“I still feel guilty for what I put Felicity through, but at the end of it all, I hoped she would get it. That she would realize that I couldn’t have done things any differently.”

He takes a breath. “Now, there’s just too much that’s broken and tainted between us. I’m amazed she still wants to be a part of Team Arrow, and so I don’t think I want to ask more of her than that. 

“I can admit that coming here was slightly selfish of me—I knew it would help me move on,” Oliver says, a guilty smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth.

Barry holds Oliver’s hands in his, aware of how intimate this might seem, but putting that aside for the moment. “You have no reason to feel selfish, Ollie. It’s like you’ve been telling me over the years—our team can be there for us when we need them, but understanding the positions we’re put in, the decisions we have to face, the masks we have to wear? That fight we fight alone.”

Oliver knits his eyebrows in frustration. “Sounds like you’re speaking from recent experience. You and Iris?”

Barry sighs, having blithesomely avoided thinking about this very issue for almost a month. “Me finally moving past my mom’s murder, her finally letting go of Eddie—it seemed like things could actually work between us. But then Zoom…did what he did, and it was like this gulf opened up between us again. Like even knowing my secrets still leaves a divide that I’m not sure can ever be crossed.”

Barry feels his hand squeezed, forcing his gaze upwards to meet Oliver’s cobalt blue eyes. “To be honest,” he continues, “we might have been better off as siblings this whole time. I’m not sure I want the distance between us to be crossed.”

“We’re islands in an unjust sea,” Oliver says. “We’re meant to be alone.”

Well that’s a depressing concept, Barry thinks. So he responds, “I’m glad we can at least be alone together.”

Oliver smiles, and Barry ignores the way it makes his heart clench that _he_ did that. He busies his hands by setting up the carrom board for another game. He dusts the chalk off his palms, sensing the fullness, the rightness of the quiet between them.

“Alright, Queen, I think my beginner’s luck is just about to kick in. You ready?”

Oliver scoffs. “The Assassins trained me for this day. Bring it, Allen.”


	6. Day 26

“Can I make a wild guess and say that this is the water chakra?”

They’re sitting at the opening of a cave. The air is crisp and cool, and tiny rivulets of water are flowing out through the stone cracks beneath them. Also, there’s a massive waterfall rushing down behind Barry’s back.

Ollie doesn’t even give him a full eye roll. His patience for Barry must be literally endless.

“Yes, Barry, this is the water chakra. So take a minute and just listen to the sound of the waterfall. Think back to what I said about letting the emotional muck flow away.”

Barry does. He thinks about the force of the water, the tiny droplets that make up the whole waterfall, the molecules that make up those droplets, and so on. He sees the minuteness in the grand, and the grandness in the minute. He imagines the water rushing through him, and even though it’s an idyllic thought, for a moment, he feels weightless.

Breathe in, breathe out. “I’m ready.”

“Okay. This chakra deals with pleasure, and is blocked by guilt.”

Breathe in, breathe out, throat _not_ tightening.

“Look at all the guilt that burdens you. What do you blame yourself for?”

He sees so much. With every victory, there was a loss; with every triumph, a defeat. At first, he sees the wormhole opening up over Central City, swallowing asphalt and street lights and parked cars. But then he looks deeper into the event horizon, and scenes from two years of trying to be a hero play out before his eyes.

He sees the people who lost their lives just beyond his reach: Bette Sans Souci, Eddie, Ronnie, even Killer Frost. He sees the people close to him that he’s put in danger: Caitlin, Cisco, Joe, Wally. The fear, the rage, the emptiness, the powerlessness—it all comes rushing back. And like a silhouette slowly becoming clear, he can see his dad, kneeling in front of Zoom, waiting to die.

“There’ve been so many that I couldn’t save,” he says, his voice choked, “and so many that I’ve put in danger in the process. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m helping or hurting.”

“I know, Barry. You’re faced with impossible choices, and it’s hard to tell if you’re making things better.”

Suddenly, Barry can see visions and memories that aren’t his. But they’re fuzzy, like he’s watching through an old CRT television. He sees Thea lying in a hospital bed after crashing her car high on vertigo. He can see Roy, struggling against the hold of the Mirakuru. He sees Laurel, a black metal arrow with green vanes stabbed through her stomach. And he can feel the conflicting emotions—duty and valor torn by pain and guilt.

Breathe in, breathe out. He’s not sure if it’s him, Ollie, or both of them.

“But you know that you’re not responsible for the malice of others, and you know things would have been much worse if you hadn’t been there. And you also know that your friends and family are with you because they would follow you to whatever end.”

Barry’s lips actually turn up in a smile. He barely has to think back to recall the number of times his friends came to his aid, even when he told them it was too dangerous. He always tended to assume it was because they didn’t think he could handle himself, after all the times he’d screwed up. But maybe they still think what he believes in is worth fighting for. And maybe, just maybe, they still have faith in him as a hero.

“If you’re going to be a positive influence on the world,” Oliver says, his voice rich as an elocution, yet intimate as a whisper, “you need to forgive yourself, Barry.”

As Barry senses the chakra opening—his lungs clearing, his blood vessels expanding, his muscles singing—he feels not only his own surety, but Oliver’s as well. He can see him kneeling over Tommy’s grave, and resolving to be a better hero for his city. He can see Thea hugging him, thanking him for being the Green Arrow. His heart, his body, his very _being_ swells with pleasure.

And certain appendages join in the swell.

Oliver’s smiling at him again like Barry’s made him the happiest man in the world, completely oblivious to what’s happening under the thin cotton of the speedster’s drawstring pants.

“Congratulations, Barry. You’ve opened your water chakra.”

Barry tries to smile genuinely. “Thanks, Oliver. I, uh, think I’m gonna stay here for a bit. Keep meditating.”

Oliver gives him perplexed eyebrow raise for a second, but his expression quickly morphs into one of understanding. “Don’t worry, Barry. It’s completely natural. Even the most hardened of Assassins had it happen to them.”

Barry’s sure his face and chest could not be any redder. “Please don’t say hardened.”

Oliver just smirks and makes to leave. “Take as long as you need. You know where to find me.”

Barry manages an awkward wave before he’s left with his thoughts and a raging boner. As he tries to will his cock downward, he can’t help but think back to Oliver’s expression of pure joy, and how he wishes he could make the archer smile that way all the time. Make him happy and keep his demons at bay. Just be there for him.

Suddenly, his hard-on doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.


	7. Day 34

Barry’s doesn’t know if it’s possible to sleep and hike at the same time, but he feels like one more yawn and his head will just float away from his body.

Still, he manages to will his leaden legs to climb higher along the ridge. Once again rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he sees the outline of Oliver in the distance, sitting on the precipice. The light is pretty faint given that it’s precisely the ass crack of dawn.

After what seems like leagues and hours, Barry finally reaches the top, feeling both winded and sleepy. And there’s Oliver, eyes closed, legs crossed, breath maddeningly calm. Barry’s about to voice his complaint once more for being roused so early when he sees the sun peeking over the mountaintops. Rich hues of gold and rouge spilling over the peaks, and filtering through the cirrus clouds. The brisk morning air suddenly turns warm and enveloping.

Barry’s speechless. Both forms of his exhaustion vanish.

“Sit, Barry. The fire chakra is best opened after the sunrise,” Oliver says, breathing deeply, as if he were taking in the dawn.

“Sit with me. It’ll just be a few more minutes.”

Barry tries to stifle his blush—Oliver’s invitation feels strangely intimate, like it’s just the two of them in this great big universe of mountains and valleys and the sun’s early morning rays. Mindful of the space between them, Barry sits, mimicking Oliver’s pose, staring out over the cliff’s edge.

It has been more than a week since the water chakra, but Barry still can’t bring himself to tell Oliver about the memories he saw. They were so personal, some before they even knew each other, and Oliver is nothing if not cagey about his privacy. Barry’s afraid that if he says something, the older man might put more distance between them during this process. And that’s the last thing Barry wants.

But there’s one image from Oliver’s reflections that still holds Barry’s gaze: Laurel, bleeding out on the concrete. Barry should have known that the loss was still fresh for Oliver. Here he was, devoting all his attention to Barry and his fragile wellbeing, when the vigilante clearly had his own grief to deal with.

It would be selfish of the speedster to expect all of Oliver’s sympathy and attentions, but there is so little that Barry can do in return. So little he can say, other than, “I’m sorry about Laurel.”

Oliver’s eyes shoot open. “What?”

Well, shit. He’d said that out loud. No way out of this except forward. Think fast, Barry. “I, uh…I just realized it’s only been a little while since she died, and with all the things I’m dealing with, I realized you must be dealing with stuff, too.”

Things? Stuff? Just say what you mean, Barry. “I know I came to see you at her grave, but I was so wrapped up in my own head that I think I forgot to say I’m sorry about what happened. So, I’m sorry about that, and I’m sorry that she’s gone.”

Oliver looks like he’s torn between crying on Barry’s shoulder, pushing him off the cliff, or just continuing to stare at him in silence. That is, completely inscrutable.

So he adds for good measure, “And I’m sorry for saying sorry so many times.”

The older man’s expression finally softens, just enough for Barry to feel like he isn’t in mortal peril anymore.

“It’s alright, Barry,” Oliver says. “She is…she was my best friend. It seems like every year I have fewer of those.”

What an awful yet true thing to say. Barry resists the urge to reach out to the vigilante.

“But I’ve thought about it a lot since she died, and while there are so many other ways I wish that day would have gone, Laurel knew the risks. Being a prosecutor, she sometimes knew the risks better than I did. So while none of us expected what happened to happen, it was always a possibility—one that Laurel had accepted a long time ago.

“I miss her,” Oliver continues, the muscles in his neck tightening, “and I want her back. But losing Laurel only underscores how important the work we do is. So many others—the citizens of Star City and Central City—face the same risk, but their risk becomes a guaranteed certainty if we fail.”

The archer takes a deep breath, pushes all the air out of his body, and settles back into a comfortable silence.

It’s in moments like this when Barry feels, no matter what the media or Joe or anyone else says, that Oliver is a _real_ hero. He duty to his city shapes everything—the way he leads, the way he serves, even the way he grieves. He’s probably the most selfless person Barry will ever meet.

Meanwhile, every setback seems to send Barry spinning. It’s like whatever center, whatever core he thought he had, tethering him to reality and to his responsibilities, has just vanished. There’s no way to know if opening chakras will bring that back, but it seems as good an option as any. And appropriately extreme.

It’s at this point that the sun—as shimmering as an egg yolk, yet as pristine as a porcelain saucer—crests over the mountains, bathing the valley in pale pink light. The speedster’s skin feels warm, his body awakening, his blood thrumming in his veins.

“It’s time to begin, Barry. Are you ready?”

Barry can see just the hint of sparks flashing across his eyes. Something inside him is calling out, “I’m ready.”

Oliver takes a steadying breath. “This is the fire chakra, located in the stomach. It deals with willpower, and is blocked by shame.”

Barry concentrates on his stomach, which at this moment, is disgruntled at the lack of anything other than tea, leafy greens, and onion and banana juice in its contents.

“What are you ashamed of? What are your biggest disappointments in yourself?”

The speedster’s gut immediately twists in knots. Shame seems to be the most debilitating force in his life these days. He sees bits of the visions he had with the two previous chakras—enemies closing in, innocents dying—but what he sees most clearly are Zoom and the Reverse Flash. Except, not as their costumed, villainous selves, but as Jay Garrick and Harrison Wells. People that Barry let into his life, shared so much with, even cared for. People who deceived him, even when all the signs were there, and in doing so, endangered everything Barry held dear. People who knew how to exploit Barry’s weakness.

“I’m so… _fucking_ naïve,” he bites out.

There is no better way to put it. Whatever skepticism that everyone else seems to have, he just doesn’t. He wears his heart on his sleeve, sees the best in people, gives them second, third, fourth chances. And all it’s done is bring him heartache.

“Barry…”

“No, Ollie, it’s true. I trust too easily. And it ends up hurting me and others. I’m a superhero who can’t even protect myself!”

Barry feels so dejected. He’s been trying to deal with these swirling emotions within him in so many different ways, but no matter how he approaches it, he can’t absolve himself of blame. The state he’s in, the mess he’s left behind, people he’s lost—it all comes back to him.

Barry cries silently. “I wish I could just be more like you.”

“No, Barry, don’t say that,” Oliver responds emphatically. “You have no idea how much damage I’ve caused by not trusting people.”

A window starts to open in Barry’s mind, the picture clearer this time than before. In full color, he sees Oliver’s shame.

Arrows piercing the chests of villains indiscriminately. Mercy not given even when asked for. Diggle, Felicity, Laurel, Roy, and Thea, all being strung along and lied to, even when in their heart of hearts they already knew the truth. 

And a future, that to Oliver feels not so far off: the Green Arrow, lying in a dark alley, with no one to call out to.

“Your inherent trust in others is what makes you hero, Barry. It makes you kind, empathetic, and forgiving—all things that a protector must be. Being skeptical, in our line of work, may save you occasionally, but it’ll leave you bitter and alone.”

Barry’s heart breaks at seeing the destiny Oliver imagines for himself. He reaches out (though whether in his mind or in real life, he’s not sure), desperate to just hold the vigilante’s hand so that he doesn’t have to be alone.

“And don’t forget, Barry, that without your trust, I wouldn’t even be sitting here.”

Just like that, the window Barry watches through expands, eventually disappearing, as their memories, and perhaps their very consciousnesses, merge. The younger man sees himself, staring bewilderedly at Oliver’s seizing body. Sees the man he had met just days before, revealed to him as the Arrow, dying before his eyes. He hadn’t thought, just acted, injecting rat poison into Oliver’s veins even as Felicity and Diggle had tried to stop him.

He remembers Oliver’s cold attitude, his lack of gratitude, his continued distrust in the scientist, and how it didn’t matter to Barry at all. What he had done was just the right thing to do.

“You save people, Barry,” the archer says in that warm, husky tone that’s distinctly Oliver. “Even when you’re not the Flash, you’re saving people. Maybe some don’t deserve to be saved, but deciding who those people are and aren’t has always been my problem. It’s never been yours.”

The memory clears, and suddenly Barry can see Oliver in his mind’s eye, sitting across from him on a flat plane faintly emanating light, with small flames rising in a circle around them. Barry’s mouth is agape—how can this be?—but the older man just smiles and nods his head.

“As someone who is an example to others, you must accept all parts of yourself, even those parts that you don’t always like. It’s the sum of all that you are that makes you a hero.”

Barry takes a deep breath, lets Oliver’s words echo in his head, and focuses on the comfort the archer’s presence brings him. With an exhale, he feels the chakra open like a fire ignited.

The first thing he registers is Ollie leaning forward, a calloused thumb brushing away the tears from his cheeks. He’s turned Barry away from the edge, and they’re sitting a foot apart at most. It should feel like an invasion of privacy, or at the very least mildly embarrassing, but after all they’ve been through together, Barry just leans into the touch.

“You did really well, Barry,” Oliver says softly, his stubble almost rubbing against Barry’s. Tears dried, Oliver moves his hand to the speedster’s collarbone and squeezes. “How do you feel?”

“Completely spent,” Barry says truthfully. But he still has a big lingering question. “So did you know that we’d be able to see each other in the…spirit realm?” he asks, flopping his hands around for effect.

“That’s probably the best thing to call it,” Oliver says, chuckling. “I knew it was a possibility. It can happen between a seeker and a guide who have a very strong connection. But I’d never experienced it before.”

Barry nods. However you define the relationship between them, you can’t deny that their connection is a strong one. “I saw your memories,” he admits sheepishly.

But Oliver seems unfazed. “It was bound to happen,” he says with a shrug. “I have nothing to hide from you, but if it makes you uncomfortable, I can try to mentally block the memories…”

“No!” Barry interrupts a bit too enthusiastically. Hearing Oliver say, however casually, that he has nothing to hide from the speedster is a huge admission of trust, and Barry doesn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that. “I like seeing them, and I don’t mind if you see mine either.”

The vigilante smiles. “Good.”

“Good,” Barry says smiling back.

They grin at each other for a bit before Oliver lifts himself up. “Come on, I caught a musk deer last night,” he says, reaching a hand out to Barry. “We can have it for lunch today.”

“You caught a _what_?” Barry questions perplexedly, letting himself be pulled up from his seated position.

Oliver shakes his head, shoving the younger man playfully. “We’re going to eat something other than onion and banana juice.”

Barry puts up his hands. “That’s all I need to know.”

They walk side-by-side, and Oliver lets his strong arm rest around Barry’s shoulders as they descend from the cliff. All Barry can think is, this is nice.


	8. Day 42

Wandering through the castle halls, Barry feels the languor of an unexpected heat spell. His movements are slow, as he’s foregone a shirt and hiked up his pant legs. The sun has barely risen in the sky and he’s already broken a sweat.

He sees Oliver next to the fireplace, unlit this morning, sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, eyes closed, likely trying to get some relief from the coolness of the stone.

“It’s so hot today,” Barry snips, feeling slightly bad about disturbing Oliver’s rest. “How is it hot?”

Oliver lazily opens his eyes, but barely stirs otherwise. “It’s the monsoon season. It’s hit the eastern part of the Himalayas, pulling all the moisture and leaving us in the west hot and dry.”

Of course he can still manage to be rational and logical while Barry’s brain feels like mush. Seeing sweat roll down Oliver’s neck and chest in heavy droplets, Barry knows he’s feeling just as miserable, and checks his tone. He sits cross-legged in front of the archer’s outstretched feet, getting a small respite from the marble floor.

“Well it’s too hot to drink tea, too hot to eat, too hot to sleep, too hot to meditate…”

“It’s never too anything to meditate,” Oliver retorts.

Barry just gives him a look, probably similar to one that Oliver is used to throwing at the speedster, and continues, “So what should we do today?”

Oliver’s silent for a few seconds, but then his eyes shoot open, and he perks up from his seated position. “We could go swimming.”

Barry is taken aback that Oliver’s offering a good, not just good for you, suggestion. And yet, “Where would we swim? We’re still 10,000 feet in the air, and in case you didn’t see, the Lazarus Pit is out of service.”

The Look gets thrown back at Barry. “Do you remember where we went for the water chakra?” Oliver asks.

Barry thinks back. Pleasure, guilt, an accidental hard-on. He nods. How could he forget?

“Well, that waterfall empties into a pool, if you hike down a bit. I’d say we could be there in twenty minutes.”

Barry shoots to his feet, hardly remembering to put on shoes or bring a towel. “Are we waiting until we melt into puddles? Let’s get going!”

Oliver smiles exasperatedly and rises, deliberately refusing to move at the excited pace that Barry is trying to keep. Twenty-two sweltering minutes and a mildly rocky descent later, they arrive at a small oval-shaped pool, the water fresher and clearer than Barry has ever seen. High rock walls, with the waterfall washing over them, and huge boulders perfect for sunbathing encircle one half, and a river draining the water in a gentle downward slope emerges from the other side. The air itself makes Barry feel cooler already.

He’s so taken with the surroundings that he almost doesn’t notice Oliver shimmying out of his pants.

“Oh my god, Ollie,” Barry says, blushing and averting his gaze.

Even without looking up, Barry can feel the archer giving him the cocked eyebrow stare. “What? It’s not like the Assassins have their own line of swimwear.”

“Yeah, but,” Barry says flustered, eyes still guarded, “you’re just going to swim in the nude?”

Again, The Stare. “Barry. You’ve seen my fears, regrets, insecurities...basically the parts of myself that I try to keep hidden from everyone close to me.”

The speedster gulps, and still refuses to look up.

“Barr, don’t you feel comfortable around me?”

At those words, the tinge of diffidence in them, Barry’s heart breaks a bit. Because _of course_ he feels comfortable around Oliver. There’s no one else he can even imagine going through this process with. But he’s also been having a lot of feelings that he isn’t quite sure what to do with, and seeing Oliver naked might totally scramble his head. Nevertheless, Barry cannot bear to have the vigilante think that he doesn’t feel completely at ease with him. So he relents.

“Yeah, okay,” he mutters shyly. And he looks up.

The first thing he notices, despite it all, is Oliver’s expression—nervous, but more open and trusting than he’s ever seen before. Then, eyes wandering, the deep, well-defined V below his stomach, leading down to thighs corded with muscle, which elegantly resolve to lean and shapely calves. His body is scarred, broken even, yet beautiful. And Ollie’s…junk? Barry doesn’t have much to compare it to, but he thinks it’s nice. Thick and heavy and manly-looking.

Luckily, before Barry has time to feel guilty for staring, Oliver flashes him a grin, turns around, and dives into the water.

Barry stays where he is for a few moments, admiring Oliver's freestyle. Not that he should be surprised, but the older man swims like he uses a bow and arrow: powerfully, but with grace, like he was born in the water.

Oliver turns around and smiles at him. No time like the present. Throwing self-consciousness to the non-existent wind, Barry unties the the drawstring of his pants, neatly folds them on top of his towel (Joe would be proud), and jumps in.

The relief is immediate. The water is ice cold, and tastes like he’s swimming in a Poland Spring bottle. His sluggishness, crankiness, nervousness all melt away into pleasure and joy. His limbs sing as they move in fluid motions, taking him up, down, side-to-side. Through the virtually transparent water, Barry can see Oliver moving similarly freely under the surface, and swims over to him.

“This was actually a good idea, Ollie,” Barry says, kicking his legs and swimming in place, trying not to leer at the archer’s naked form.

“What do you mean ‘actually?’” Oliver says feigning offense.

“I’m just saying, I worry about someone whose favorite pastimes are meditating and opening chakras.”

The vigilante chuckles, then says, if only a touch forlornly, “I used to have real hobbies.”

“Didn’t we all,” Barry scoffs, “I used to read. Not like speed read. Like sit-in-a-lounging-chair-with-a-cup-of-tea read. And not just science books—I read novels!”

“What kind of novels?”

Barry blanches a bit. “Sci-fi,” he mumbles sheepishly.

Oliver snorts, _snorts_ , and fumbles a bit as he wades in the water.

“What? I’m a boring guy. My tastes are not complex.”

The older man gives him a long look. “I don’t think you’re boring, Barry.”

The speedster swallows an egg and tries to quash the unfamiliar warm feelings swirling in his chest. “What, uh…what did you used to do for fun?”

“Other than party, skip class, and corrupt young people?” Oliver retorts with smirk ghosting his lips.

Barry laughs, wondering not trivially what it would have been like to be corrupted by Oliver Queen.

“My dad and I used to do things together—sailing, riflery, that sort of thing. But I liked those mostly because they were rare opportunities to spend time together.”

Oh no, Barry thinks. Please don’t let him be the cause of bumming Oliver out on a day like this.

“What I did like,” the archer continues, “was playing tea party with Thea.”

“What?!” Barry exclaims without thinking, splashing the water with his hands for effect.

“No, seriously! Thea sometimes seemed like the only person who didn’t want anything from me. She just wanted me to sit in a chair, surrounded by all her favorite stuffed animals, and be served tea. It was kind of nice. She’d grown out of it by the time I left on the _Gambit_ , though,” he replies, again with wistfulness in his tone.

“But what I really liked,” he goes on, moving to float on his back, “was to go for long rides on my motorcycle. To Coast City, or Ventura, or even to Keystone City, once. They were great whenever I just wanted to think.”

Barry raises an eyebrow. “Sounds a lot like meditating to me.”

“Oh, Barry, it’s so much better,” Oliver responds with uncharacteristic excitement, turning his face towards him. “Sun in your face, wind in your hair, engine too loud to hear anything else, completely exposed to the elements—there’s really nothing else like it. Riding a motorbike was the only time I felt like I was following my own path, not just taking one someone else had lain out for me.”

For a moment, no one says anything, the admission being much more personal then either of the men were expecting.

“Wow, Oliver,” Barry finally replies, “I had no idea.”

“Yeah, well,” the older man says, a bit sheepishly, “not much time for joyriding these days.”

“Maybe you could take me for a ride sometime…”

“Yeah, maybe,” Oliver says, not unexcited by the idea.

“…like one of your French girls,” Barry finishes teasingly, laughing at his own _Titanic_ reference as he backstrokes away.

“Oh yeah, Barry?” Oliver remarks with a challenge, coming after him to the center of the pool. “But you know what happened to Jack, right?”

Barry just stares him down, giggling. Before he can even react, Oliver’s has tackled him, pulling him under the water. The speedster laughs and struggles, but the older man’s hold on him is too tight. Yet even as he looks up at five feet of water between him and the surface, with Oliver’s strong arms wrapped around his midsection, all Barry can think is that for the first time in a while, he can _breathe_.


	9. Day 49

Barry has a sneaking feeling that he’s being watched.

Not in a paranoid schizophrenic kind of way. Just that he’s in a courtyard full of statues and they all seem to be staring at him.

Oliver’s taken him up to an old Assassins sanctuary, abandoned a long time ago after the group became less about inner peace and more about murder. It’s a plateau on one of the range’s taller peaks, paved with mossy stones, and populated by the likenesses of the League’s early leaders. Barry can see the remains of what was a roof over the small space, now crumbling and dilapidated. Yet the faces of the statues are unblemished and serene, as if they could weather another millennium and stay the same.

Barry focuses his breath, and looks across at the older man, who seems more torn up than usual.

“In some ways, Barry, everything we’ve been doing has been leading up to this. Just know that I’m going to be there with you the whole time, and if you feel like it’s too much, we can always stop. There’s no shame in it.”

Barry starts to feel a little nervous. He thinks the other chakras were already pretty grueling, and Oliver didn’t give him a trigger warning before any of them. What could be worse than fear, guilt, and shame?

Barry takes another steadying breath. “I can do this, Ollie.”

Oliver still looks cut up, but goes on, “Okay, Barr. The fourth chakra, the air chakra, is located in the heart. It deals with love, and is blocked by grief.”

Gulp. Oh, that is worse.

“Lay all your grief out in front of you.”

Barry closes his eyes, and feels himself thrown into darkness briefly. When he opens his eyes, it’s not like the other times, where he saw his memories play out in front of him, like he was a spectator. This time he’s in it, and he’s not even sure it’s a memory. He’s in his childhood home. It’s morning, the sun is shining through the front windows, and he’s at the top of the stairs.

“Barry!” a woman’s voice calls out. “Breakfast is ready!”

It can’t be, Barry thinks. But that voice sounds so familiar, even though it’s been fifteen years since he’s heard it. He rushes down the stairs, nearly tripping over himself as he turns the corner to the dining room. And like a stock photo, there they are: his dad, glasses pushed down to the end of his nose as he reads the paper, sipping a steaming mug of coffee; and his mom, her red hair as vibrant as he remembers it, scooping eggs onto three plates at the end of the table.

“Where’s the fire, Barry?” his mother says, smile as warm as ever, as she sets the pan down on a placemat.

“Mom,” Barry says breathlessly, and walks over to pull her in an embrace.

“Well good morning to you too, honey. You’re acting like you haven’t seen me in years.”

The speedster rests his head on her shoulder. “Do you want me to stop?”

His mom laughs. “Of course not. But your eggs are getting cold.”

Barry smiles as he extricates himself, taking a seat across from his mom and next to his dad, who briefly looks up from the newspaper.

“Morning, son,” he says, eyes beaming as usual.

“Morning, dad,” Barry replies, again feeling the wind taken out of him with those two words.

He tucks into his eggs, scrambled, fluffy, and perfectly seasoned, just like he remembers. They taste like he’s eleven years old again.

“Do you want toast with those, Barr?” his mom asks in that doting way that only mothers can manage.

“Sure, mom,” Barry answers, feeling as happy as he’s ever been.

She hustles into the kitchen, as his dad points out something from the morning edition. “Did you see this, Barr? Crime in Central City is down again, this year. That Flash is really cleaning things up,” he says, sharing a knowing look with his son.

“Henry!” his mom’s calls out. “Can you help me in here?”

“Sure, sweetie,” his dad answers, grinning as he pushes the swing door into the kitchen.

Barry continues to eat gleefully, enjoying the eggs, the beautiful morning, the peace of mind that his parents are safe. He looks around and sees framed photographs of moments that he never thought he’d have with his parents: prom night, his first car, graduations, his first day at CCPD. It’s all like he always wished it would be.

Suddenly, he realizes it’s been a few minutes, and he hasn’t heard any noise coming from the kitchen. He abandons his half-eaten eggs, and gets up to investigate.

“Mom, Dad?” he says as he extends his hand to open the door to the kitchen. “Everything okay?”

As the door pushes open, Barry’s feels his throat catch and ice in his veins. His parents are both lying on the floor, unmoving. His dad is face down, and his mom is on her back with a knife sticking out of her chest. Blood is pooling under her and spreading over the linoleum floor.

“Mom, come on, stay with me,” Barry says frantically, dropping to the floor next to her body, desperately searching for a pulse.

Finding none, he turns to his father and sees an ugly black wound on his back, like it was cauterized by lightning. “Dad, please,” Barry cries out, cradling the face of the man who taught him to play catch, built science fair displays with him, parented him even behind bars. “Please come back.”

“It’s no use, Barry. They’re already gone,” rings out a voice that sounds like Oliver.

“Ollie?” Barry questions, his voice weak and tight. Tears are flowing freely down his face now, and he holds his head in his hands, trying to keep from hyperventilating. It was bad enough the first time.

“I’m with you, Barry, even though you can’t see me.”

That’s comforting, the younger man thinks, as he continues to tremble.

“You’ve experienced a great loss, Barry. Losing a parent is never easy, but to have both of them taken away so violently…”

Barry sniffles and squeezes his eyes shut tightly.

“It’s cruel.”

Behind his closed eyelids, Barry can see flashes of Oliver’s memories. A lifeboat, and a middle-aged man raising a pistol to his temple. And a dark forest, where a grim-looking man thrusts a katana toward an older woman’s chest. He’s spared from seeing any more, and for once he’s grateful for the vigilante’s coddling of him. He realizes that these are the scenes of Oliver’s parent’s deaths, and knows now that the older man really has suffered the selfsame pain as him.

Barry opens his eyes to try to find Oliver in this mindscape, but instead discovers that everything has cleared away, and he’s standing in front of a swirling spire of green mist.

“You miss who they were as people, as well as the moments you could have shared with them. But Barry, your parents loved you so much. I can tell that just from the way you remember them.”

In front of him, Barry can see scenes from his real past: taking his first steps and running towards his mother, eating ice cream and watching the fireworks when their car got a flat in Masonville, hugging his dad as he walked out of prison a free man. They were the best parents anyone could ever ask for.

Oliver continues, his voice rich and warm and soothing. “What’s more is that the love they had for you hasn’t left this world. It’s still inside of your heart, and is reborn in the form of new love.”

The mist shifts and changes suddenly, and Barry feels himself swept up. He sees the faces of Joe and Iris, his adoptive family, who make him feel like the luckiest orphan in the world. He sees Caitlin and Cisco, his chosen family, who’ve given him more unbidden than he could ever ask for. And dammit, he’s crying again. From joy? Sorrow? Catharsis? Probably all of the above.

Then, the mist shimmers one more time, and he sees a face that’s grown so familiar to him over the past few weeks: Oliver, his eyes trusting, his expression open, a smile pulling at his lips, laughter lines creasing his cheeks. Barry can see him as clearly as if they were standing face-to-face. And he understands.

“Let the pain flow away, Barry.”

Barry breathes deeply and feels a tiny dam burst in his chest. His heart, once on the verge of being closed off and unresponsive, springs open.

The speedster opens his eyes with a monumental exhale. He wipes the tears from his face with the back of his hand, yet is unable to wipe the weary smile off his face. Oliver is sitting just a foot away from him, looking relieved, but still visibly tense about something. Barry thinks he knows what it is.

“Barry…what you saw…” the vigilante stutters, “it doesn’t have to mean anything…it could just be—”

“Ollie,” Barry interrupts, shaking his head. He snakes his hand around Oliver’s neck and pulls the older man’s face toward his.

The kiss is light at first, hesitant. Oliver’s lips are soft and steady, like he’s still reluctant to cross the line that’s in reality far out of sight. But then the mood changes, and the kisses grow deeper. Barry runs his tongue along the seam between Oliver’s lips, and the vigilante responds in kind. He rises on his knees and cards his fingers through Barry’s hair, sending shivers through his scalp, while he rests the other hand on the younger man’s lower back. Barry moves his hand to the archer’s chest, that ridiculously solid chest that drives him crazy. They both open their mouths more, just drinking each other in.

They inch closer together, pressing their bodies against each other, until they’re embracing. The kisses change to soft pecks on the neck and cheek, and then they’re just resting their foreheads together, taking deep breaths.

“Can I…” Barry starts.

“What, Barry?” Oliver whispers, kissing him again. “You can have anything you want.”

“Can I have…more…onion and banana juice?” he says, stifling his laughter.

“Barry!” Oliver says with a swat to Barry’s shoulder. He laughs and dives at Barry’s mouth again, giving the speedster everything he never knew he needed.


	10. Day 54

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SMUT ALERT. You have been warned.

Rain pounds at the castle walls in rivers and torrents. Wave after wave beats against the hard stone, as if there's thunder right at their doorstep. The monsoon has finally made its westward journey, reaching even high up into the mountains, tempting Nanda Parbat with sunshine and clear skies, only for the heavens to open up minutes later. The heavy rains will stick around for two weeks, with intermittent showers staying on for a month.

But Oliver isn’t thinking about any of that.

He can’t hear the wind or the beating rain. All he can hear are Barry’s groans, his rapidly beating heart, his breath hitching every time the archer’s hand brushes over a new patch of skin. Since the air chakra, they’ve been taking advantage of Ra’s al-Ghul’s large, plush bed, and getting to know each other in different ways. Exploring each other’s bodies, and finding those sensitive spots that drive the other crazy. But Oliver still thinks he’ll never get over this: Barry in his arms, his pupils blown wide as he pants almost feverishly.

How could Oliver have gone so long without having the speedster like this? How could he deny how he felt about the younger man when there were so many chances to say something?

But it doesn’t matter now, as the vigilante attaches his mouth to Barry’s neck, while the scientist scrapes his fingernails over the older man’s back. They’re moving at a frenetic, almost teenager-like pace, sucking hickeys and kissing hungrily, but Oliver doesn’t care. He’s never felt more aroused, or even _alive_ , in his life.

He runs his right hand down the speedster’s lean, hairless chest, tweaking his nipple for good measure. He moves the hand lower, loving how Barry can barely control his spasms or the noises coming out of his mouth. Mewls, whines, yelps—whatever you want to call them, they were making Oliver hot as hell.

At last the vigilante’s hand reaches the soft linen of Barry’s drawstring pants. Just a thin layer of fabric separating him from the speedster’s pale pink, well-kempt, gorgeous member.

“Ollie,” Barry chokes out, in a voice that almost sounds pained, but that Oliver now recognizes as fucked out.

“Can I?” Oliver’s still careful to check that everything he wants is what the younger man wants, too.

“Please.”

That’s all the archer needs to hear. He undoes the simple knot and tugs off the pants, shucking his own while he’s at it. And then they’re skin-to-skin, head-to-toe. It’s electrifying.

Oliver lets his hand rest on Barry’s hip for a moment, enjoying the incredible friction that rubbing their bodies together gives. As he inches towards the younger man’s cock, he turns his head to look into Barry’s hazel eyes. Seeing that boyish, earnest, ageless face staring back, regarding him as if he’s the most important person in the world—it’s almost too much for Oliver.

“Barry,” he whispers, “I wanna make you cum.”

He can see the speedster’s Adam’s apple quiver as he swallows. “That shouldn’t be too difficult,” Barry responds, grinning.

Oliver chuckles, glad the moonlight isn’t bright enough for the scientist to see him blush. He didn’t know that sex could so fun and easy and…well, funny, before being with Barry. But that’s what makes the younger man so different from anyone else he’s fallen for.

He strokes Barry unhurriedly at first, twisting his wrist around the head just the way he knows the speedster likes it. But then Barry kisses him hard on the lips, and whispers, “Faster,” into his ear, and he’s only too happy to oblige. He speeds up, cupping the younger man’s balls occasionally and running his thumb over the slit. Barry surrenders all control, making the sweetest moans, and wrapping his limbs around Oliver’s body. And the older man loves this, too, that Barry clings to him like he’s a lifeline. It makes him feel worth more than he thinks he is.

He's getting close, if the younger man’s quickened breaths in his ear are any indication. So Oliver changes things up, and encloses both of their cocks in his hand as he strokes. Oliver’s member is longer and thicker, but he makes it work, and just enjoys the slick slide of skin against skin.

A hand turns his face towards Barry’s, and the speedster just looks at him for a moment, and Oliver revels in the knowledge that he’s making the younger man come apart like this. Barry kisses him again, forceful like before, but also sensual, like he’s pouring himself into it. The vigilante thinks he could live on kisses like this.

Then Barry is just crying out against his lips as he climaxes, spilling his seed on Oliver’s cock, fist, and stomach. He comes and he comes, and then he just rests his head on the archer’s shoulder, like he’s incapable of doing anything else.

Oliver rubs Barry’s back with his other hand and presses a kiss into his soft brown hair. “That was beautiful, Barr,” he says, almost purring.

The younger man lifts his head and looks at Oliver past drooping eyelids. “That was fucking amazing, is what that was,” Barry responds, his voice hoarse.

Oliver laughs and pulls the speedster closer to him, pillowing him on his chest and not worrying about the mess down South for the moment. He can recognize from Barry’s wrecked tone and lazy movements that he’s ready to fall asleep at any moment.

But then Barry jerks upright and looks at the older man with a serious expression on his face. “Ollie, you’re still hard.”

The vigilante smiles, glad that that’s all the speedster is worried about. “It’s okay, Barry. Don’t worry about it.”

But the younger man shakes his head vigorously. “If twenty-seven years of being straight taught me anything, it’s that your partner has to come, too.”

Oliver laughs. Only Barry Allen could follow good sex with even better pillow talk. “Twenty-seven years of being straight…so what does that make you now?”

Barry shrugs with an exasperated smile. “I don’t really know. But I really like being with you,” he says, placing a soft kiss on Oliver’s nose.

The archer kisses him back. “Me, too.”

The younger man gives him that earnest, puppy dog look that could melt a glacier. “So let me take care of you.”

Oliver is about to concede out loud, but then Barry starts kissing his way down his neck, tickling his stubble, then to his chest, landing on his left nipple. And as the speedster sucks it into his mouth, teasing with his tongue and teeth, the older man loses all ability to communicate, or even make sounds other than moans of pleasure as his brain temporarily short circuits.

Barry stays there for a while, moving to the other nipple, then back, showing just how much he appreciates Oliver’s pecs. He trails even lower, lapping up some of his own cum spattered on the vigilante’s stomach. Seeing that, if Oliver wasn’t completely hard before, he is now.

The younger man finally reaches his cock, burying his nose in the pubes and breathing in. Oliver has been with a lot of people, but never anyone who’s so genuinely into him. He’s never known a feeling of being so attended to. Barry gives a tentative lick to the head of his dick, and Oliver’s well-aware that the younger man’s experience level in this area must be limited to none, but just the fact that it’s Barry doing it makes all the difference.

The speedster looks up at him with that completely trusting and unguarded expression he gives so easily. “I want to suck you off, Ollie.”

Oliver swears a little precum came out just at hearing those words. “Do it,” he answers, his head too scrambled to say more.

Barry opens his mouth, his pink lips taking in the first third of Oliver’s cock. He hollows his cheeks and sucks, his tongue teasing the head and foreskin. It’s a little messy—there’s a lot of saliva, and the younger man’s teeth occasionally get in the way, but Oliver wouldn’t change a thing. His enthusiasm and quick response to the older man’s groans are more than doing the trick.

The speedster opens his mouth wider, swallowing another third into that tight, warm mouth. It feels so good that Oliver can’t resist running his fingers through the younger man’s hair.

“It’s okay, Barry. Don’t worry about taking the whole thing.”

The scientist makes eye contact and does his best to nod. He stays where he is, trying to get to the suction just right. He moves one hand to cup Oliver’s balls, and lets the other crawl up the older man’s chest to play with his nipples. It’s sensory overload for the vigilante, and it’s all he can do to lean back and just experience it.

Barry continues with zeal, lathing the older man’s entire shaft with his tongue, and even sucking his balls into his mouth. For being new to all of this, the younger man is more than willing to experiment.

Finally, the speedster figures out how to gently graze his teeth along Oliver’s length, and that friction is just too much for the archer. He takes the younger man’s hand in his to get his attention.

“Barry,” he chokes out, his voice beyond ragged, “I’m gonna cum.”

The speedster’s mouth comes off his cock with a sinfully hot pop. “So cum,” he says nonchalantly.

Oliver’s eyes bug out in disbelief, but before he can say anything, Barry responds, “I said I wanted to suck you off. That means I want to see what you taste like, too.”

The older man is completely nonplussed, but he just throws his head back and says, “Better hurry up, then,” hoping it doesn’t come off quite as desperate as he is.

Barry swallows down as much of Oliver’s cock as he can handle, and then strokes the rest with his hand. His tongue, his teeth, his mouth—it’s all perfect. Oliver rests his hands on the speedster’s head, and half shouts, half roars as his orgasm hits, shooting his load down Barry’s throat.

His vision essentially whites out, and it’s a good ten or fifteen seconds before he’s come down from the climax. He sees Barry looking at him with a satisfied grin, as he wipes Oliver’s cum from the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand. The older man thinks he’s never seen a sexier sight.

Barry crawls up his body and places a kiss on his lips, surprisingly chaste after all they’ve gotten up to. Oliver kisses him right back, and wraps an arm around the younger man’s back to pull his long, lithe frame toward him.

“Holy shit,” Oliver says, at a loss for any other words.

“Yeah, I know, for me, too,” Barry answers almost sheepishly. Oliver looks down and sees that the speedster had orgasmed for a second time with him. Wow.

The older man grabs his long-discarded shirt from the floor and uses it to clean him and Barry up. The younger man doesn’t say anything, but the look in his eyes says he appreciates the gesture. Oliver tosses the shirt blithesomely and pulls a blanket over the two of the them, even though the room is already sufficiently humid.

The older man buries his face into the other’s brunette locks. He really likes Barry’s hair. It’s always so neat, and smells clean, with a tinge of vanilla and cedar.

“Barry, you should know that this is, uh,” Oliver stutters, struggling to put into words everything he’s feeling, “this is _more_ , a lot more, to me.”

The younger man just smiles at him, unfazed, and lifts his head from Oliver’s chest to kiss him sweetly. “I know, Ollie. It is for me, too. You’re not alone.”

Barry turns so that Oliver can spoon him from behind, and settles his head on a pillow. Within a minute, his breathing has evened out, and the vigilante can tell that he’s fallen asleep. He puts an arm around his waist and holds him close, loving how even in sleep, the speedster responds so openly to his touch.

You’re not alone, the older man ponders, as his will to stay awake melts away. For the number of times he’s heard it, Oliver thinks he’s never really believed it until right now.


	11. Day 62

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's T-minus 8 days before I start grad school, so here's hoping I can finish close to then! Also, sorry if this chapter is less interesting than the others. I'm much more excited about what's left to come.

Barry’s eyes wander in childlike wonder. He takes in the three-story-high vaulted ceiling, the hole where the stones have caved in to let in rays of mid-morning light, the massive statue of a legendary Assassin that occupies fully half of the cavernous space. It took them more than two hours of hiking up through brambly, overgrown paths to reach this temple, and Barry wants to appreciate the fruits of his labors. But then his gaze lands on Oliver—his lover? Boyfriend? Partner?—who’s giving him a very stern look.

“Barry, are you even listening to me?” Oliver asks slightly exasperatedly.

“Yes, definitely, sorry,” Barry answers apologetically. He musters all his focus on Oliver, his steely blue eyes, the tight muscles in his neck, his rigid pecs, coated with just a sheen of sweat, his rock-hard abs, that faint trail of hair leading from his belly button straight to his…

“Barry!”

“Sorry, sorry!” The speedster tries to arrest his leering stare and keep his mouth from gaping open, but truth be told, he still can’t believe that he’s allowed to look at the older man this way. That he gets to touch, caress, lick, taste every inch of him. Thinking about that is so much more interesting than chakras.

“Like I was saying,” Oliver continues, demonstrating once again his limitless patience, “the fifth in chain is the sou—”

“Wait, Oliver!” Barry interrupts, feeling a stroke of brilliance, “are we going higher up altitude-wise to match the chakras going up higher in the body?”

The vigilante sighs, and gives the younger man a half irritated, half pleased look that only he can manage. “Yes, Barry. We open each chakra at a higher elevation than the last to represent the ascension of reaching enlightenment.”

“Wow, rad, that’s super cool,” Barry says grinning, feeling only slightly guilty about being annoying, “Please go on.”

Oliver’s eyes bulge a little with a lot of things unspoken, but he takes a deep breath and keeps talking. “This is the sound chakra, located in the throat. It deals with truth, and is blocked by lies.”

Barry internally scoffs. His whole _world_ is buttressed by lies.

“Specifically,” the archer adds on, “the ones we tell ourselves.”

At those words, Barry is thrown back nearly two years ago, to a roof in Starling City, where Oliver told him something that the speedster has clung to ever since.

“I don’t think that bolt of lightning struck you, Barry,” he’d said in a tone so serious that it sounded like a prophecy. “I think it chose you.”

Barry wants, has wanted, so desperately to believe those words, but faced with the enormity of his losses and defeats, the fragility of his gains, and the sheer fickleness of fate, he just doesn’t know if he can believe anymore.

“I think you were wrong all those years ago, Ollie,” the younger man says, hating the self-pitying timbre in his voice of someone who’s been kicked while he’s down too many times. “That lightning didn’t choose me. I wish I could be everything that the Flash is supposed to be, but I just don’t think I can. I’m not meant to be a hero more than anybody else.”

He’s foolish for thinking that the budding romance between him and Oliver would make this any easier. It’s like each time he thinks he’s found the bottom, the deepest well of all that he’s struggling with, a sinkhole opens up and he’s cast even further into the abyss. How can things ever go back to the way they were when he’s not even sure if that’s what’s meant for him?

“Barry,” Oliver starts, and in just the way the vigilante says his name, Barry can tell that that the older man’s response isn’t going to be platitudes or empty comforts, but genuine understanding and insight. Through the older man's memories, he can see Oliver watching news reports, reading headlines that call the Green Arrow dangerous. Unhinged. _Murderer_. And he knows that Oliver wondered if they weren’t right, if he was anything more.

“Maybe that lightning didn’t choose you. Maybe it was just a freak accident that just happened to be engineered for you.”

Oh, right. Dr. Wells/Eobard Thawne had kind of planned the whole particle accelerator with Barry in mind. Somehow, that still doesn’t make it any better.

“But no matter what was fated to be, when you were given the gift of superspeed, you responded selflessly, with a mission to serve others. A lot of people became metahumans that night, Barry. But only one became the hero of Central City.”

The younger man remembers how hard it was when he first got his powers, how difficult it was to try to keep people safe when he was still learning his own abilities. And yet, giving up and going back to his normal life never seemed like an option. Not after he’d wanted for so long to make a difference.

“What’s even more incredible, what inspires _me_ , Barry, is that you held true to your principles and beliefs. Think back to the last time you were here, in Nanda Parbat.”

He’d almost forgotten. It wasn’t exactly easy to run all the way from Central City to the tallest mountain range in the world, but Oliver needed him. And so he knew it was important.

“Everything you knew about your past, your whole world was crashing in on you at the time, and you still helped my team when I couldn’t,” the archer says emphatically. “I don’t know how many ways I can say it, Barry: _you’re a hero_. No matter what you think being the Flash means, you’ve lived up to it.”

The speedster is sure he’s beaming under the older man’s praise, but he can’t help it. He never imagined that Oliver—the man who embodies everything a hero should be, who’s mentored him and watched out for him even when he had every right to lose his patience and quit—would find him, Barry Allen, the hapless forensic scientist, inspiring. The very thought makes him want to do more and be more just to be worthy of Oliver’s high estimation.

Maybe destiny doesn’t have anything to do with it. But Barry is the best that Central City has. And he will always give his best to Central City.

Barry exhales deeply, and as the air passes his lips, he can feel a whisper of the words he’s always struggled to say: _I am a hero_.

He opens his eyes to Oliver’s smile, and already he feels like he’s been rewarded for his efforts.

“That was great, Barry,” the older man says, unafraid to show just how proud he is. “You’ve opened the chakra of truth.”

The younger man feels relieved, but also puzzled. “This one seemed different from the others. I didn’t relive very much of my past.”

Oliver nods reassuringly. “As we move up the body, the blocks to the chakras become less emotional and more intellectual," he says, seeming slightly tense and discomfited. "They have more to do with how you conceptualize your past experiences rather than the experiences themselves.”

Barry shakes his head and laughs to himself. “You still don’t miss a beat, though, Ollie.”

The vigilante cocks an eyebrow, completely oblivious to how endearing that expression is. “What do you mean?”

“How is it that you know exactly what to say?” Barry answers breathlessly. “How do you know what’s freaking me out even when I don’t, and then tell me exactly what I need to hear to think clearly? How can one person do all that?”

The archer shrugs in that nonchalant way that’s equal parts maddening and comforting. “I know what it’s like to be where you are. I’ve gone through most of it, myself. And I know _you_ , Barry.”

Barry’s mouth pulls itself into an exhausted grin. “Yeah, you do.” _Maybe better than anyone else_ is implied but goes unsaid.

The older man jumps to his feet with a satisfied bounce. “Are you ready to go?”

The speedster rises a little more gingerly. “Actually, could we stay here for the day?”

“Stay here?” Oliver asks perplexedly. “And do what?”

Barry rolls his shoulders. He considers the golden light filtering in the space, the rich green moss on the walls, the coolness of the air, the chirping of the swallows. “Just…hang out?”

Oliver smiles again, like he’s simultaneously humoring the younger man, but also understands completely. “Sure, Barr. Whatever you want.”


	12. Day 70

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving, friends! I know you probably thought I abandoned this fic (sorry), but I'm actually still working on it! Just at a much slower pace now that I'm in grad school. I hope to have another update for you before the new year--enjoy this in the meantime!

Oliver looms over Barry’s sleeping form, admiring the younger man’s gently closed eyelids, soft, steady breath, limbs curled away from the quickly encroaching sunlight. The archer looks especially longingly at the speedster’s auburn hair, lightly tousled; his fingers ache to card through it and massage the younger man’s scalp. Barry looks so at rest, so peaceful that Oliver almost doesn’t want to wake him, but he knows the speedster would never want to miss what the archer has in store.

“Barry…” he whispers in the younger man’s ear, drawing out each syllable. He runs his hand down the sleep-warm skin of Barry’s arm at the same time.

The speedster stirs, lightly groans, and like a petulant child, turns away from Oliver and buries his face in a pillow.

The archer chuckles, and lets his fingers dance over the brunette’s back. “Come on, Barr, I wouldn’t be bothering you if it wasn’t important.”

Oliver hears a loud exhale from the younger man’s nostrils. “Yeah right, Ollie. You’ve woken me up before just to meditate, which is basically just half-sleeping,” Barry responds, his voice uncommonly gravely and kind of sexy.

“I really hope that’s not all you think meditating is after two months of work,” Oliver says with sternness creeping into his tone. But then he remembers that Barry is just cranky, and is probably only two-thirds aware that he’s having this conversation. “Just trust me, okay?” he exhorts more gently. “This is a good surprise.”

The speedster cracks open one eye and gazes at Oliver suspiciously, then slowly begins to pry himself from the covers. The older man grabs his hand and pulls him up the rest of the way, and wraps his arm around Barry’s back, guiding him outside as he would if the younger man had had a few drinks (and could get drunk). He also grabs one of the scientist’s shirts, thinking he’ll want it once they encounter the morning chill.

Barry grumbles the whole way and maintains an extremely adorable scowl, but otherwise complies. They shuffle over the cold stone floor, tracing a familiar path out of the living quarters. It’s strange, but for all the time Oliver spent here as an Assassin, all of the distaste and pain he associated with Nanda Parbat, being here now, with Barry, makes it almost feel like a home.

As they reach the courtyard, they see an elderly Nepali man standing behind a small cart, with vapors rising from bubbling pots into the brisk air. Oliver can see that Barry notices him too, but his reaction is to lift his nose upward, his expression now maximally alert.

“Mmmmmmm,” he says with a groan of pleasure that Oliver has only ever heard in a _different_ context. “What is that smell?”

“My guess would be steamed dumplings, dal, and thukpa, all classics of Nepali cooking,” the older man responds with a knowing grin.

“Is it…is it for us?” Barry asks hesitantly, as if it were too good to be true.

“Yeah, Barr, it’s for us.”

Oliver swears he sees lightning flash in the speedster’s hazel eyes as he hustles over to the cart, no longer in need of the older man’s support.

By the time he reaches the cart, Dhonu already has a bowl ready for Barry. The younger man barely utters his thanks before he starts slurping down his soup quickly enough to scald the throat of a non-meta. “Oh my god, hot food, spices, flavors, how I missed you!” he exclaims through spoonfuls of thukpa.

Oliver chuckles, but inside he’s beaming. He loves seeing and making the speedster so gleeful, even if he is easy to please.

“Greetings, Dhonu,” the archer says in halting Nepali, having only learned a few basic phrases when he was an Assassin. “How’s business this year?”

“Not bad, Al Sah-Him,” Dhonu replies with a toothy smile as he ladles a bowl for Oliver. The vigilante offers a handful of rupees that he rummaged from the castle, hoping it will cover both his and Barry’s meal. From Dhonu’s response, he manages to catch that things have been hard since the Assassins disbanded, but that he’s getting by.

Oliver sips the soup, and by now the speedster has moved on to the dal with white rice, which he shovels into his mouth as if it might evaporate at any minute. His mewls of pleasure haven’t stopped, and he seems completely unconcerned that he’s in the company of others. Meanwhile, Dhonu does nothing but grin.

The archer is still working on his soup when Barry finishes the dal and is about to go back for more, when Oliver notices a smear of sauce on his cheek. Feeling bold, Oliver grabs the younger man’s wrist, leans close, and licks the errant smear from his skin.

Barry blanches just a bit, and so the older man whispers, “You had some food on your face.”

The speedster blushed and says, “Thanks,” bending his head down to place a light kiss on Oliver’s lips. The older man can taste just a hint of the warm spice mixture in the dal.

The archer looks over at Dhonu, realizing this is the first time he and Barry have shown affection in front of someone else. The Nepali man isn’t smiling any more, but he doesn’t say anything, and hands the scientist a basket of pearly, translucent steamed dumplings.

Barry’s reaction makes his earlier utterances seem prudish. He hums, purrs, and even vibrates a little bit as he gobbles the momos down whole. He exerts himself so much that he has to sit down on the bench at the edge of the courtyard.

“You’re ridiculous, you know that?” Oliver says as he sidles over to Barry, munching on his own dumpling.

“Sorry, not sorry,” Barry responds mock petulantly as he continues to wolf down momo after momo. “I loved food before I became the Flash, and getting struck by lightning just took that to the next level. Also I’ve been eating like a mouse for two months.”

Oliver couldn’t argue with the younger man there. A monastic diet was hard even for those used to a bare lifestyle, but for the Flash, it must be excruciating. Still, the older man never knew whether to find it irritating or endearing when Barry acted a little childish.

“So what’s his deal?” Barry ask, nodding his head in the direction of the food cart.

“His name is Dhonu, and he and his family have been peddling food through the Himalayas for generations,” Oliver responds. “He used to come to Nanda Parbat every few months, and always after the monsoons ended. I left a note letting him know that there were actually people here this year.”

“Was it so you could see me lose my mind over some dumplings?” Barry deadpans as he finally sets the empty basket aside.

“Well, no, though that was an added benefit,” Oliver says, laughter lines forming around his eyes as he looks straight at Barry. “I did it because I knew it would make you happy.”

“Oh.” The speedster is uncharacteristically silent for more than a minute afterward, his facial expressions mixed as if he was trying to think through something. As he does, Oliver sits down next to him and at last runs his fingers through the younger man’s cocoa-colored hair.

“This is really nice of you, Ollie,” Barry finally says, his words caught a little in his throat, and not because of the dumplings. “The only people who do stuff like this for me are family, or people I basically consider family.”

Oliver quirked an eyebrow. “Do you not consider me to be like family?”

The speedster blanches a little. “No, I do! Well, I did—I mean I thought of you as a mentor and a friend and someone who would be there for me. But now…” Barry adds, his words trailing off.

“But now?” the older man parrots inquisitively.

“Well now we’re more than that. I think of you differently than I do of Joe or Iris or Caitlin or Cisco. I mean, aren’t we, like…” Barry pauses as he gesticulates hurriedly.

“Boyfriends?,” he finally asks, insecurity laced in his voice.

Oliver stays quiet, momentarily silenced by the younger man’s admission.

“No, Barry. You’re not my boyfriend,” he finally answers calmly.

Ignoring the stricken look on Barry’s face, he carries on. “I had a lot of girlfriends before I was on the island, and with the exception of Laurel, they were all meaningless relationships. Distractions that were in and out of my life in a month or two, people who couldn’t care less if I was alive or dead in a year, let alone even knew who I was as a person what I wanted out of life.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Oliver qualifies, “I was not the prize boyfriend, either. But what I’m saying is that you and I aren’t like that. We _can’t_ be like that.”

The speedster quirks his eyebrow suspiciously. “So what does that mean?”

The older man looks into those mystifying hazel eyes. “You’re my partner, Barry,” he says without hesitation, as he laces his fingers with the younger man’s.

Barry stares at him dumbstruck for a moment, his mouth opening and closing as if he’s trying to put something into words. But then, amazingly, he doesn’t say anything at all, squeeze’s Oliver’s hand, and lays his head on the other’s shoulder.

The vigilante can’t help but feel warm inside as he rests his chin over the speedster’s temple, close enough to hear the accelerated beat of his metahuman heart. He thinks he can also make out Barry mouthing “partner” soundlessly. Across the courtyard, Dhonu is turned toward him, with a facial expression he can’t quite make out. But then the food vendor raises both his hands in thumbs-ups, and that about captures the moment for Oliver.


	13. Day 83

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, comrades. I'm sorry if you thought I died. It's partially true, because this semester is killing me softly. Please accept this update as my apology. I am counting down the days until summer (40 as of today) when I will finally finish this fic! Only two more chapters and an epilogue to go--that is my solemn promise to you, gentle reader.

“Do you remember why you’re here, Barry?”

The speedster honestly isn’t sure he does. The sun is shining, so brightly and clearly that they could only be in Central City. A light breeze is ruffling the trees that dot the park land around the library. It’s Barry’s favorite place to think.

“Barry,” he hears a familiar voice repeat, then feels Oliver’s steadying hand on his shoulder. He looks into the older man’s icy blue eyes as bits and pieces of an earlier conversation come back to him.

“We’re here to open your light chakra,” Oliver says with his characteristic warm, rumbly tone.

The light chakra, Barry thinks. Center of the forehead, deals with wisdom, blocked by illusion, as details start coming back to him. His mind feels foggy, yet serene. Like insight is somewhere in the haze.

“Let’s take a walk,” Oliver suggests, bringing the younger man back to the moment. The archer starts walking along the winding path that hugs the building’s glassy exterior, with light reflecting off the surface in piercing beams. Barry races a bit to catch up with him as his fingers instinctively find the older man’s calloused palm. If he’s dreaming, it might as well be a good dream.

The vigilante squeezes the younger man’s hand in response, continuing to walk and talk. “In our line of work, there’s rarely time to reflect on our actions, or how they shape our worldview. As heroes, we often have to make monumental decisions in a split second. It forces us to see things in black and white that are actually quite complex.”

Barry quirks his eyebrow. “I get what you’re saying about the pace and pressure, Ollie. But what do you mean about worldview?”

“Think about this,” the older man says, as if he’s puzzling through something. “Most people you meet seem to fall under the category of friend or foe. Cop or robber. Good guy or bad guy.”

“I think I need one more pair of opposites to get the picture,” Barry says smirking.

Oliver glares but it’s clear that his heart isn’t in it. “Well think about the people you know well. No one is actually wholly good or wholly bad all the time. I mean, think about yours truly.”

“Come on, Ollie, don’t do this. You’re good person,” Barry responds insistently.

“Well you wouldn’t always know it from my actions,” Oliver says darkly. “And that’s my point. You can’t easily separate the good people from the bad because you can rarely, maybe even never, know who people really are.”

Barry pauses for a breath, letting Oliver’s words sink in. He knows what the older man is saying makes intuitive sense, but when someone wishes him harm or ill, it’s hard not to make a summary judgment.

As if on cue, Oliver stops in his track and places his hands on Barry’s shoulders, looking the younger man dead in the eyes. “I want you to think, Barry, _really_ think about Dr. Wells.”

The younger man swallows a rock and lets himself be guided to sit down on a nearby bench. “What about him?” he manages to choke out.

“He manipulated you for his own ends and didn’t care about the consequences as long as he got back to his own time. But he also trained you and shaped you to be the hero you are today,” Oliver answers carefully.

Barry shakes his head. “I spent so much time agonizing over it. Why would he go through all that trouble to help me? Why care when all he wanted was to destroy me?”

“I know this may be hard to hear, Barr, but maybe these are the wrong questions to even ask. You can spend an eternity pondering what was going on inside of Eobard Thawne’s head, but even if you could speak with him, you would never really know.

“The world and the people in it are too complex to be divided into good and evil,” Oliver says, pausing long enough that Barry almost thinks he’s done speaking. “Even Hunter Zolomon was more than just a villain.”

Barry jerks his head up and almost sees red. How could Oliver say something so callous about the man who murdered his father? He swallows and tried to tamp down his emotions. “Hunter Zolomon pretended to be a friend to Team Flash. He killed my dad and almost killed Caitlin. How can you ask me to see him as more than an evil person?”

The older man sighs, looking forlorn. “You know his history, Barry. His father was abusive and cruel, and he witnessed his mother’s murder when he was just a kid, even younger than you were when your mom died. And unlike you, who got taken into a loving home, Zolomon went into the foster system. Whatever was compassionate in him got smashed out by pain and neglect. I’m not saying that excuses any of the things he did, but I am saying that there were other ways to gain your trust. He could have tried to appear to you as an authority figure, but he chose to be your friend instead.”

The speedster scoffs and refuses to meet Oliver’s eyes. “Probably to learn more about us or make it hurt that much more when he showed his true colors.”

“But it could also be because he wanted to be your friend,” the vigilante says urgently. He gently places his fingers under Barry’s chin and lifts his face so that he can see those tormented hazel green eyes. “Maybe he cared about your friendship, and enjoyed being a friend to you. Even every brain scan that Caitlin has at her disposal couldn’t tell you for certain one way or another.”

Barry feels so torn, trying to control the tremors in his limbs and his quivering lip. This process has demanded a lot of the younger man, but this—this seems too much.

He senses the vigilante kneeling in front of him, and feels warm, rough hands envelop his own. Without looking up, he knows that Oliver can see right through him.

“I’m not asking you to forgive him, Barry,” the older man says, his voice down to a whisper. “I’m just asking you to see him as more than a villain.”

With Oliver’s light grip grounding him, Barry takes a deep breath. For the first time, when he pictures Hunter Zolomon, he doesn’t see Zoom and his cruel malice. He sees a man—broken and complex, who got dealt a bad hand, and never learned how to be a decent person. Thinking of him in this way actually makes it easier to understand what he did. The speedster exhales, feeling the familiar opening up sensation, this time just above his eyes.

When opens them, he sees a sea of clouds blanketing the mountains and valleys below. Oliver and he are on an outcropping just off the trail that leads to the highest point in Nanda Parbat.

He feels a lightness in him from the high altitude and the sublime scene before him, but more than that, he feels an uncanny clarity. For the first time, he has a sense of the structure of his mind. He can see the thoughts in his head appear and disappear, but doesn’t feel consumed by them.

“You’ve opened the sixth chakra in the chain, Barry. You’re almost there.”

Barry feels Oliver’s voice wash over him like a warm breeze. The enormity of all that the older man has done for him truly dawns upon him. He looks into those icy blue eyes and runs his hand across the stubble. Leaning forward just enough, he plants a light kiss on the archer’s lips and rests his forehead on the other’s.

Eyes closed, just listening to the soft exhales between them, Barry whispers, “Thank you, Ollie.”

He can feel the vigilante’s face turn up in a grin. “You’re welcome, Barr.”

The speedster shakes his head. “No, I really mean it. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you…”

Oliver smirks. “How long are you gonna say thank you?”

“Until you know.”

“Until I know what?”

_That I love you._


End file.
